Mondo's Flight Academy
by Eve-Mag
Summary: The curious story of one man learning to fly, and the man called Mondo.
1. Chapter 1

by Sunforge

I can remember the first time I stopped just looking at the stars and started thinking about travelling to them. I was in my back yard and can't have been more than seven years old when I saw something bright streak across the sky above me. I ran inside, full of childish excitement about my latest observation to ask my dad what could have caused such a phenomenon:

"Dunno" He grunted, without looking up from whatever journal he was reading. Now I don't know about you but whenever my father didn't answer a question it was normally because he felt it was something I shouldn't know about (beer, girls, pulling the legs off spiders, the usual stuff), so I filed his answer away in my child's mind for further enquiry. During my teenage years I enthusiastically investigated all the topics that my dear father wasn't forthcoming about. I discovered pretty quickly that, in the main, girls didn't like being investigated too much but space flight and beer made very good companions. So that, as they say was that, it was going to be a pilots life for me. I did of course harbour the secret plan that pilot plus spaceship equals babe magnet but I've yet to find a girl who was magnetically attracted to any ship that I fly. You live and learn I guess.

My father used to despair about my obsession with space travel and my frequent "junkie" visits to local scrap yards just in case there was something I could salvage from a genuine space craft. If I did find something that looked like it came from the skies above, I'd spend the whole day hacking it into small pieces to bring it home. As a result my folks became bemused hosts to a menagerie of ship parts, dead electronics and other paraphernalia that I'd drag back to their humble home.

As I grew up and my teenage years left me I took a bunch of random jobs and saved as much cash as I could so I could buy a ticket off the gravity bound lump of boredom that I called home so that I could do something better with my life. At one point I got so desperate to get a ship that I did, briefly, contemplate stealing one and lighting out for parts unknown to live the life of an outlaw. I was swiftly put off when I realised pretty much every ship had a transponder fitted that enabled Concord to work out where you were: or at least that's what I was told by an off duty security guard one day over a beer. Scratch that I thought to myself: back to the two jobs and night school.

In the spare time I had left between all the work and evening classes I hung around the space port talking to freighter crews asking, and in some cases begging them, to take me up for a ride. Sometimes a kindly skipper would let me hitch with them, which was always a highlight of my month and other times I'd sit there staring at the ships as they passed through on their business. I began to wonder if I was going to be one of those sad, middle aged guys, you see sitting on the 'mac outside the space port wondering where their best years went. I know, at the time, it wasn't the easiest thing for me to accept but I had no flight experience and whilst I thought I was a good mechanic I couldn't prove it to anyone else. That's when I realised one very important thing about getting your first crew slot: you had to look like crew and most importantly talk like crew.

I'll let you into a secret here: freighter captains inhabit the lowest rung of the space ladder. Everyone else looks down on them because they fly the unglamorous slots at a space port: midnight to 6 am. They also survive on very low margins and have to cut their costs to the bone, in harder times, just to keep flying. I noted after a while that these guys were also a breed apart; they didn't wear fancy uniforms, nor did they care for manners or what school you went to. No: these guys cared about the next trip off planet and whether they had enough cash to keep their crates going. After spending a lot of time hanging around with crews and bugging them for scraps of information I learned to ape their mannerisms and even began to dress like them. If you want to know how an average freighter crewman dresses, just empty out your wardrobe and pick the worst stuff you've got then put it on, then go outside and roll in the dirt for a while, you'd be a shoo in for crew. So in possession of the secret code of dress like crew, act like crew and talk like crew I began my quest for a ride.

You know what? One day my little act worked and a freighter skipper hired me on the spot as second engineer to fill in for one of his guys, who'd gone down with food poisoning, or avoidance of the law, I was never quite sure which. This was going to be my first trip and like all first trips it was a memorable one. During my tenure as official second engineer, which lasted all of one flight, I learned an awful lot of lessons. I'll give you a few examples: a dead guidance system isn't helped by one of the crew being too tightly wound for the confines of the ship. Lesson two: a crowbar makes for an excellent improvised tranquiliser. Lesson three: when swinging a crowbar don't get it caught in any overhead control cables, the pilot tends to panic if all his instruments go offline at the same time. Fortunately I was saved by my savant ability to work small wonders with duct tape although I'm not entirely sure I patched every cable back the right way round.

So the excitement kind of turned me round a little by the time we docked up. I needed a drink to settle the nerves and stop my hands shaking. I parted with a few isk and slapped a stiff scotch down the hatch. Did I tell you that the guidance system cut out during docking? Probably not, but the sound of a ship colliding with station shields is as impressive as the sound of a pilot swearing he's going to kill you if he ever sees you again. The scotch dealt with the shaking hands and did wonders for my confidence, which in hindsight wasn't so great, but hindsight is twenty-twenty and I was too young to know any better. Now all I had to do, I said to myself, is find a ship yard, buy a ship and ride off into the sunset, right? Yeah, right, you'd better read on hadn't you.

After a couple of wrong turns I made it to the biggest shipyard in station and there, amongst the piles of scrap and bits of partly disassembled ship, I found the owner: Mondo Thursday. Over the years I've got to know Mondo pretty well but I've never been brave enough to ask him what kind of parent calls you Mondo Thursday. Mondo's a cash only guy with a preference for avoiding the words tax, guarantee and working order but apart from those omissions in his character he's pretty honest. On that first day I spent quite a while walking round his yard staring at the ships, some of them big, glamorous things that looked like they were meant for deep space exploration, others more prosaic industrial types. After about an hour of wandering round, mouth agape at the prices, I struck up a conversation with Mondo. It was a short conversation which ended when he sent me away for wasting his time because I was a kid. I felt like I'd been caught in the adult store and shooed out by the staff: nothing to see here kid, get back to where you belong.

The way I looked at it if I could survive being second engineer on a garbage flight I could get Mondo to sell me a ship, so I begged a place to crash that night and headed back the next morning.  
"Howya doin' kid?" It was Mondo's standard greeting.  
The kid bit grated with me, but I learned later on that he dropped the kid when you'd made your first flight and came back in one piece. It was his way of putting the universe to rights I guess.  
"I'm not gonna give up Mr Mondo, I want a ship." I said with grim determination in my voice.  
Mondo looked me up and down as if assessing my credit worthiness.  
"Cheap ship huh? Been saving your cash?" He said philosophically.  
"Mr Mondo as long as I can afford it and the thing flies in a straight line, I'll be happy."  
Mondo smiled at me, then he turned round to look at the long lines of ships in his yard.  
"Well if you're just starting out, why not try that little ship" he pointed to a battered looking orphan in the far corner of his yard and then carried on "Three previous owners, none of 'em too careless, flies pretty well and you know what? I've had a good day so I'll throw in a laser or two."  
I thought he'd stopped but it was one of his pregnant pauses, which you quickly learn not to interrupt. Mondo's a man that likes to have some space around him so he can think.  
"You'll be paying cash" He said after his pause. I nodded "And you ain't moving anything from my yard until ever last isk clears with the bank" He continued.  
At least Mondo was being honest with me, so after a little haggling and some careful counting of my cash I ended up buying that battered little orphan in the corner. To seal the deal he poured me a scotch which went a small way to easing the pain of parting with my life's savings. When we were done, he offered me some final words of wisdom:  
"That ship'll treat you well if you fix it up some" He said in a fatherly kind of way "And don't get too ambitious the first few times out: that's a great way to get a pilot's funeral".  
I didn't know what a pilots funeral was but I learned a little later that it meant dying in the cold vacuum of space. A pilot's funeral indeed.

There I stood, the proud owner of a new ship, a variant of the Impairor class if you want to know, called "Old Mary". I didn't like the name it had, but I knew from traditions going back thousands of years that you never changed the name of a ship. I also knew that shooting Albatrosses wasn't such a good idea either, which was more problematic, since I'd never seen an Albatross and was hoping they weren't some kind of weird space creature. Traditions aside, I was one proud happy kid when I clambered on board and sat in the pilot's chair on the control deck. I'd brought myself up on a solid diet of space fantasies with my buddies but I was the only one that'd got this far. Now I was a pilot sitting in my first ship with a thousand dreams all clamouring to be fulfilled and out there, in the limitless expanse of space, was where I could make it happen or die trying. I can't tell you if I got misty eyed or wiped a tear from my eye but I do remember a swelling pride that came from knowing that I'd finally made it: I was, for better or worse, a pilot. My dreams of adventure were interrupted by Mondo poking his head round the bulkhead door to the control deck.  
"So when's your crew arriving kid?"  
"My, uh, I need…" Something wasn't right, I'm sure I'd read that the Impairor was a one man ship. "I don't need a crew" I blurted out.  
Mondo laughed.  
"You don't need a crew if you're a pod pilot, that's true. But you're no pod pilot, so you'd better round up an engineer and a gunner if you're going to get this thing out of here".  
Ah a crew: I'd spent everything I had on the ship and had nothing left to pay a crew with, except vague promises. I felt deflated and sheepish as I sat there with my hands on the control column.  
Mondo was, I guess, bright enough to spot a man who had lost his way.  
"Ah, you hadn't figured this out had you? Well you're not the first and you certainly won't be the last." He stopped for a second and pulled a data pad out from his pocket, passing it to me "Take this, it's on the house, it's got the recruitment pages".

I took the data pad from him and began searching through the pages. It was disheartening reading: a lot of the crews were hardened veterans and they wanted more cash than I could have saved in a lifetime. It dawned on me that I had to make a hard choice: pick a veteran who'd fallen on hard times or take a chance with a few rookies, like me, who were looking to catch their first ride. To be honest it terrified me as I realised that I might not have what it takes to lead a crew and fly a ship at the same time. I also knew that I couldn't go back: I'd bought this ship and I wasn't going to give up my dream for the lack of a crew.


	2. Chapter 2

My dad use to say that it was great to start at the beginning and never be tempted to give up half way through. I began to realise how true that was as I started working in Mondo's shipyard: I had a ship but no crew and no money to hire them with.

I tried getting work around the station but everywhere I asked I got a firm No, with a capital N just in case I didn't get the message. I guess this had something to do with the number of "station bums", who were guys that hopped from station to station scraping a living at being not very good at anything at all. After a day or two's searching I trailed back to Mondo's yard with my tail between my legs to beg him for a job: it was either that or suffer the ignominy of selling my ship back to him at a loss.

"Can you fix things up kid" Mondo said to me after I'd pleaded my case.  
"Sure I can, I was pretty good at mechanical stuff planet side"  
"Okay" He said as he picked up a box of components from beside his desk and gave them to me  
"If you can put this collection back together you got yourself a job."  
So this was it: my life had come down to whether I could make sense of the contents of a box of spare parts. I felt like someone up there was rolling the dice and having a good laugh at my expense.  
"Well there's no sense in wasting time staring at it kid" Said Mondo as he left his office.

I stared at the contents of the box a little longer, then busied myself with assembling the bits and pieces he'd given me into a recognisable piece of equipment. I have to say I was panicking as I sorted out the bits and pieces but the panic began to subside once I'd found a few bits and pieces that I recognised. When I finally realised that this box of bits went together as a high voltage back feed suppression circuit I was so relieved I jumped up, whooped and punched the air. I would have danced round the office but Mondo, a man with exquisite timing, poked his head round the door of his office just as I was in mid Whoop.  
"So you've finished huh?" He was smiling at me, which was the first time he'd done since I'd met him.

I proudly handed him the finished circuit and even managed to scrape up a few facts and figures about circuit design from my night classes in case that impressed him. He turned the freshly assembled device over in his hands whilst we had a quick discussion about mechanics and ships and then he handed the circuit back to me saying:  
"Kid, you're hired. Go see Geoff the foreman and he'll set you to work. The first five days you get paid by the hour, if you last longer than that I'll pay you weekly." And that's how I got hired by Mondo.  
After two jobs, night class and a mini adventure getting to the station, it was a refreshing change to work on ship's equipment in the yard and I picked up a lot of useful tricks from other yard hands. Five days passed in the blink of an eye and to be honest I was so busy learning about fixing equipment that my search for other crew members went to the back of my mind. I was reminded that I had to do something when I got summoned to Mondo's office at the end of my first week.  
"So, you found a crew yet?" Mondo enquired.  
"Ah I said," Squirming a little, "I kinda got lost fixing stuff during the week but I have been looking..sort of"  
"So, more time in the yard huh?"  
"It's tougher to find guys to fly with than I thought Mr Mondo " Okay that was a weak excuse, but the truth was that I was flat broke, didn't know anyone and spent most of my time ripping ships to bits and repairing them with the other yard hands.  
"Well you've got a puzzle haven't you: there's the ship which is your biggest asset but then there's the pilot who's the biggest liability seeing as you're a rookie"  
I gave him a puzzled look.  
"I'll spell this one out shall I," Mondo said, steepling his fingers "No-one wants to get killed flying with a rookie on the promise of being paid at the end of a trip but people will risk it if they have a share in the ship."  
I thought about this for a bit and it made sense but to give up a share in the ship when I'd just bought it: the thought killed me. Mondo wasn't finished though, he could sense my disquiet  
"It's a tough decision: stay here for as long as it takes to scrape the cash or find some rookies who want to give it a shot. If you've had no luck with the data pad try looking around the other yards. You never know: you might find a few like-minded adventurers." Hmm, it was like he already he a few people in mind but wanted me to find them myself, which was I guess, part of the game. I agreed to give it another few weeks and he was quite happy to keep me around since I was developing a knack for fixing guidance and control systems, possibly because of my interest in being a pilot, and maybe because I'd seen what happened when one of them went wrong.  
I followed his advice and in my limited spare time began asking around the other yards in the station to see who was new and most importantly keen to "get a ride" as I'd heard it called and that's how I bumped into Kzen. In the shipyard next to us, it was Partink's den I think, I'd got friendly with a few of the yard hands and one of them told me about a wiry Minnie guy by the name of Kzen Tovenburg. He had a talent for improvisation and after a few drinks late one night in a bar, he agreed to sign on for a third share in the ship. We both agreed we were crazy and drank a toast to it. About a week after that Kzen ran into a friend of his, by the name of Podie who liked the idea of signing on for the final share in the ship and had a reputation for being a good shot planet side.  
Well the day came, sooner than we thought, when we decided it was time to take the Imparior out for a short spin round the station. We'd got our days off all straightened out and one by one we assembled on the cramped flight deck of the ship.

Podie sat down in the gunners seat and flipped on the controls, idly toying with the data pads and making funny pew pew sounds. Kzen took over the engineers position and began a methodical check of the control switches. I took to the pilots seat and realised that, finally, this ship was going to fly.  
It was at this point that Mondo, a man with an unnerving sense of timing, poked his head around the bulkhead door.  
"Now you're not going to fire the engines up in the yard are you?" He said sternly.  
"I uh.." I was temporarily lost for words. Come to think of it, how did you get a ship out of the yards? Mondo stood there smiling at me whilst he waited for my next question.  
"Okay, I give in, how do you get a ship out of the yards?"  
"Weeeel now" He said putting his hands in his pockets "I know a man whose got a tug who might be able to do you a favour. I think you could get him down to maybe five hundred isk or so"  
There was a collective cry of "Five hundred isk" from all three of us who were, to a man, flat broke as we'd spent our collective savings, which wasn't saying much, on buying fuel for the ship. We got killed on the price because we couldn't commit to a regular contract.  
"We don't have that kinda cash!" We all said at the same time.  
"Oh don't worry about that, if you all work hard in my yard for a few weeks you'll save the cash in no time."  
A few more weeks was all it was going to take? I briefly toyed with the idea of firing up the engines and saying to hell with it but something told me that Mondo may have already considered that three ambitious young men might do something drastic and had taken precautions. I also knew that Mondo was not a man you crossed lightly and trashing his yard would've put me pretty high on his hit list.  
I paused to gather my thoughts for a second "Is there any other stuff that we're going to have to pay for before we fly?"  
"Ah well now you ask the question there's a few things that you might want to think about: station fees, docking and undocking charges, a pilot's licence, a fuel contract and perhaps a float for repairs"  
My heart sank to my boots: it was going to take us months to scare up enough cash to do that.  
"How much is that going to cost us?" Kzen butted in with a resigned note in his voice.  
He puffed out his cheeks ; you could see him doing to mental sums and coming to a number that he knew we weren't going to like.  
"I'll tell you straight, it's probably not a good idea to fly until you've got another 10 thou or so tucked away."  
"Mondo" I was annoyed enough to forget to call him mister "Why didn't you tell me all this before I got the ship?"  
Mondo laughed his big, booming laugh.  
"Would you have bought this ship if I'd have told you how much more it was going to cost to get it out of here?" He said.  
No I said to myself. No I'd have walked away, dreams dashed and probably done something stupid like buy an arable farm. Mondo didn't need an answer from me, he knew what I would have said. His face softened a little and he walked into the cramped command deck.  
"Guys come to my yard every few weeks with a wad of cash and a vague idea about flying a ship. I turn most of 'em away 'cos, cash or not, space ain't the place for 'em"  
He looked around at us all one by one.  
"You guys, you're a different breed: you want to fly anything, no matter how small or what kind of compromises you make to get out there. But before you get out there you gotta know some basics. The kind of basics you don't learn in class but the kind you learn right here, fixin' stuff for me."  
We looked at each other, wondering whether he was kidding us or being straight. He held up his hands and carried on:  
"My yard's got a nickname: Mondo's Academy. I've had quite a few hopeful pilots come through here and some even make it out into the space lanes." He put extra emphasis on the last few words.  
"Face it guys it's good business if you come back in one piece and it'd be heartless of me to push rookies into space without some kinda' practical experience. "  
With his little speech still spinning round our heads, he walked off the control deck and back into the yard but couldn't resist a few parting words  
"I'll let you guys hang out for another ten minutes, after that I'm docking your pay"  
For a second I thought Podie was going to get up and hit Mondo with something but after he stood up he obviously had second thoughts and sat down again.  
"The bastard, the old bastard" Said Podie  
"Bastard he might be, but I get the feeling he might be right" Contributed Kzen who was the most level headed of the three of us.  
I didn't say anything. I was busy rewinding all the conversations I'd had with Mondo and coming to the dawning realisation that the old bastard had, somehow, sold me a ship, got me to work in his yard and on top of all that paid him rent for the ship because I couldn't take it anywhere. I'd also learned a heck of a lot about putting ships like this together again when they went wrong and found a crew I trusted.

"Welcome to Mondo's Academy" I said to no-one in particular "One day we're going to graduate from this frak hole and fly this thing out of here and maybe one day, we'll come back and say thanks to the old bastard and buy a better ship off him".

One day, I thought, one day.


	3. Chapter 3

There are times when you need help and advice from your folks. There are times when you need a shoulder to cry on. Then there are times when your mother calls you up in the middle of the night promising to chain herself to your ship to stop you making the worst mistake in your life. I woke up in a cold sweat at 3:00 am thinking that it was just a dream, then checked my communicator and realised no, it wasn't a dream, and my mother had actually called and really promised to "stop all this silliness". Silliness? Don't go there, this is my mother and she's not entirely rational when she gets something into her head.

You see I'd been in the orbiting space station for a couple of months by now and had made two very good friends in Kzen and Podie. We all worked in the same ship yard, locally dubbed Mondo's Flight Academy, and we'd worked hard to save our cash to fuel and fly a little Imparior class ship which we were fixing up. What the hell were my folks rescuing me from? Nothing was wrong as far as I could tell; I had cash in my pocket, I liked my job and had two great friends. In the end I gave up trying to sleep and got up for a shower, in what passed for a bathroom, in the lodging cabin which had become my new home. I had a very cold shower, damn the heating, my mind racing to work out how I could stop my parents from carrying out their bizarre pantomime promise. Was it legal to stun your parents and lock them in your cabin whilst you got away? Could I persuade the station officers that my parents were, in fact, dangerous terrorists with a price on their head? The more my mind raced the more unlikely the scenarios became but I'm going to draw a veil over the darker thoughts I had that morning: they don't show me in a charitable light.

Let's face some facts here, parents are great in principle but once you reach a certain age you realise that they're generally as mad as a bag of bogwumps. Okay maybe only my parents are as mad as a bag of bogwumps and yours are paragons of virtue and charity: congratulations, you can skip the rest of the story. I was faced with the prospect of having my own ship impounded by an overprotective mother with my father (probably driven to the edge by my mother) on hand as enforcer. Okay, the first order of the day, I thought to myself, was to break this little nugget of news to my friends.

Silence wasn't the reaction that I was expecting. I'd waited until lunch to, you know, slip it casually into conversation. I failed miserably on that count and ended up sort of shouting it in a whisper loud enough for everyone in the makeshift canteen to hear.

"Oh my god my folks are coming up here and mum's gonna chain herself to the ship, dad's gonna start a fight with anyone that tries to unchain her. Oh god my parents."  
Absolute silence. Everyone looked at me. Then Big Al, a man who could tear armour plates off ships without assistance, started laughing. I contemplated hiding but I didn't think it was going to look too dignified hiding under the table. I stood up then sat down, looking sheepish and shrugged my shoulders.  
"I'm frakked" I said summing up the situation.  
More laughter followed.  
Kzen and Podie stopped looking puzzled and joined the laughing parade. I shrugged again and fixed my gaze on a blank spot on the far wall and folded my arms over my chest.  
"Say that again Sun" Said Big Al.  
"I'm totally, completely frakked" I said.  
The laughter continued for a few minutes and then Big Al disappeared from the canteen. He reappeared a few minutes later with an improbable length of chain which he rattled onto the table in front of me.  
"On the house" He said with a grin "Does your mum look good in chains?"  
I wished that I had something smart and witty to say back but nothing sprang to mind. After moments indecision I stood up said "You guys…" shook my head and stalked out of the canteen to gales of further laughter. Life was not good.

So I checked my communicator and guess what? Yup, my dear old mother had sent another little message informing me that she'd booked two emergency tickets on the red eye shuttle which would arrive tomorrow morning. My head spun for a second: I had less than 24 hours of freedom before my life got curtailed by my parents. It was in the middle of these ponderings that Kzen punched me in the shoulder, which was his standard way of saying Hi.

"C'mon it's not that bad Sun, a little embarrassment from your folks isn't going to upset anything" He said cheerily.  
The problem with Kzen was that he was Minmitar. Okay that came out wrong: the problem with Kzen was that he wasn't familiar with Ni-Kunni borderland traditions and not to put too fine a point on it, the Ni-Kunni legal system.  
"Kzen, I didn't tell you this before but if my dad grounds me I'm grounded".  
Kzen gave me a blank look.  
"You don't get it do you? I guess a lot of people don't, but round here if you're under 25, which I am, my parents have to give their consent before I can leave my homeworld"  
There I'd said it, Kzen looked startled. I'd better explain things for you, just in case you're not Ni-Kunni either.

You see the Ni-Kunni grew up at the wilder edges of the empire. Our home world is in the Mishi system and whilst the landscape is beautiful, damn, it's hard to live in. This environment shaped Ni-Kunni traditions long before the Amarr got hold of us and we had a fistful of arcane traditions which matched the Amarr and then some. The longest standing tradition is that the head of the household (yup that'd be my dad) owned his wife and kids and his family couldn't do anything without his consent. This tradition had a peculiar effect when the Ni-Kunni were conquered and enslaved by the Amarr. The slave traders didn't buy and sell individuals; they just bought the oldest male in the family: the rest of his family came for free. Things changed when a bright trader realised that splitting the family apart created more slaves to buy and sell, so males above the age of 25 were exempted from the Ni-Kunni tradition of ownership. Pfft - upon a change in the law a heck of a lot more Ni-Kunni slaves became tradable and the trader who changed the law (a freed Ni-Kunni himself) became a very rich man. The law has stayed that way ever since, even with the end of slavery. So I guess I have slavery to thank for giving me some freedom from my father but I was cursing myself for only being twenty years old. It took me a while to explain the in's and out's to Kzen and Podie but they got it, in the end. For a while we all sat around keeping our thoughts to ourselves, since the future didn't look that bright if my dad could simply come along and ban me from going off world.  
"So why don't we make a run for it, he can't stop you when we're out there Sun" Suggested Podie.

"I wish it'd work, but the law's the law Podes: if I leave I've broken the law. Concord and the local police could impound the ship and arrest you for aiding and abetting a known criminal."  
"Man this is just like the Minmitar Slavery laws" Cursed Kzen.  
Kzen and I got along so well, probably because our common ancestral experiences had slavery in them. You could see from the look on his face that my current dilemma touched a nerve deep inside him; I guess no-one wants to think of themselves as being someone else's property. We spent about an hour talking about what we could do, and then gave up on the topic as each avenue we explored looked like a dead end to us. Then we got a little more morbid and began to talk about what we could have done had the law not been such an ass. After we exhausted that topic we gave up talking and drifted back to work in Mondo's yard. I told Mondo all about my predicament and he expressed some sympathy but had a far off look, like he was thinking about something else, which jarred me. Perhaps one man's burden is another's opportunity; perhaps he was wondering if he could get the ship back and make a profit. Who knows? I wasn't brave enough to put that scenario to him.

The rest of the day passed without incident and at the end of our shift we all hit our favourite station bar for some desperately needed alcoholic refreshment, since this was my last night of freedom. The owner of the bar, a man by the name of Jaco, was a decent enough guy, although rumour had it that he was never entirely sober. I strode over to the bar and ordered our usual round of drinks. I was just about to take them back to our table when I received a hearty slap on the back which knocked the breath out of me for a second.

"You're sure your dad would approve of this?" Said a voice behind me.  
It was Big Al again. I hadn't had him down as a bully, but since his discovery that my folks were going to whisk me away from the station perhaps he'd seized on the idea that he could have some fun with me.  
"Don't start Al, its bad enough knowing that this is my last night up here."  
"You going to take it lying down? Man you're a bigger mummy's boy than I thought you were"  
"Al it's the law, I can buck my parents but not the law and you know it."  
Al knew it alright and he knew that he could needle me all night about it, in my favourite bar, with an audience. He carried on with random comments for a while, made loudly enough so that all could hear it until I'd had enough. After a few drinks the booze got a hold of me, I stood up and marched purposefully across the room to speak to Big Al. Al held up his hand to stop me, as I walked towards him.  
"Tell ya what kid, seeing as it's your last day, how's about a little game of Beat the House?"

I'd forgotten that this was the bar where anyone who could drink more than Jaco in an evening got their bar bill torn up. His suggestion caught me off guard and played to two things that were not working in my favour right now: I was young and I'd already had something to drink. The combination of the two, for those of you who have forgotten what being young is like, was that I agreed to Big Al's challenge without thinking. The stupid, drunk part of me clearly thought it'd be a great idea to drink so much that I forgot everything.  
"Hey Jaco" I said.  
"Yeah?"  
"Beat the House: I'm the challenger" I said standing up on the bar rail so that everyone in the bar would notice me. A ragged cheer went up from the mob. Jaco smiled and sidled towards me carrying a bottle of my favourite liquor. You had to hand it to a man who was never quite sober; he never forgot what you liked to drink. He pulled two racks of glasses out from underneath the bar and filled one rack with my poison of choice and the other with his. He rang up the bill for both racks of glasses on my tab and stuck the receipt to the last glass in my rack. To prevent any cheating, he moved his rack of glasses out of the way of the main bar to a place where we could all see it.

"Rules are simple Sun, you drink everything in that rack and when you've finished you've got to read the tab on the last glass out loud without slurring, puking or passing out. If you make it I'll tear it up and we're done. If you don't, you pay for everything."  
He grinned again, reached for two of his glasses and chugged them both down.

Game on.

Whilst I was busy attempting to pickle myself Big Al, being the instigator of tonight's fun, suggested a game of "Chain your mother", which being a new game became instantly popular with the crowd. My humiliation became much easier to bear the more I drank, so I put myself to the task of beating Jaco with steely resolve. The evening wore on and to my great shame (I was told some days later) I passed out three drinks before getting to the end of my rack.

When I woke up, it was dark, uncomfortable and I had a headache that was so bad I threw up. I also couldn't move. Oh frak I said to myself, I've got drunk then fallen over and paralysed myself. Where the hell was I? I tried to move again and it slowly dawned on me that I wasn't paralysed but I was in chains. It took a while to put the fragments of the previous evening together, but in hindsight Big Al playing "Chain your Mother" and me passing out wasn't a good combination. The old pod pucker had obviously wrapped me in chains and rolled me somewhere unpleasant to live out my final hours. My dilemma was pressing though: I couldn't think straight, was in chains and couldn't see either. I tried moving around my new prison but kept bumping into some very awkward (and sharp) metal boxes which hurt. I tried shouting for help but that made my head pound all the more and I threw up again. In the end I settled for moving myself around and then pounding on any object that got in my way with my feet. Someone would hear the noise, I thought to myself, and come to investigate.

I don't know how long it took before someone noticed my dilemma but after I'd practically wrecked wherever I was trapped, a door opened and light flooded in to illuminate my surroundings. The light hurt my eyes so I shut them and threw up again. There was a tutting sound from my rescuer.  
"I'll put the damage and cleanup on your tab" Said Jaco.  
Damn, was I still in the bar?  
"What time is it?" I asked blurrily  
"About four in the afternoon" He said cheerily and just loudly enough to wake my hangover up again.  
I groaned and rolled over: I'd missed my last day of freedom, my parents would have arrived and I looked like a disgrace. Even more worrying was the fact that, since I was technically missing when they must have arrived, they might have filed a report with the police. That would take some explaining. I tried to get up but couldn't, so I lay back on the floor and groaned loudly. Jaco shrugged his shoulders but left the door ajar so that I could get out. In the end, after I'd recovered enough of my thoughts to get myself together, I made it out of the store cupboard and persuaded one of the staff to help me out of my chains, then I staggered back to my lodging cabin to clean up.

I can't remember what time I made it to Mondo's yard but I do remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I realised that the Impairor we'd been fixing up wasn't there. In its place was a big gaping chunk of space. I stumbled my way over to the spot where it had been the day before and just stood there, arms hanging limply at my side. I didn't feel like a stoic Ni-Kunni as a tear rolled down my cheek; no I felt like a young kid who'd taken a wrong turn and got mugged. How stupid could I have been? I knew what must have happened: Mondo knew that my folks were coming, had sent Big Al over to the bar to keep me distracted and then quietly come to some arrangement with my folks whilst I was out of the way. I'd done business with Mondo over a handshake and took his word that everything was fine. I'd assumed that he'd honour any agreement we had. I'd been so utterly, foolishly young and stupid. I wanted to do something about it but I knew that it was his word against mine and up here, as it had been made clear many times, his word counted for a lot more than a hundred of me. Disconsolate, I walked to the cabin to see how I could get myself out of the mess I'd got myself into and maybe, just maybe, get some wages out of Mondo.

I got to the cabin and went in, not bothering to knock. I didn't know what I was going to say, hoping that something would spring to mind; some clever, witty remark to retrieve some of my pride. Mondo was sitting behind his desk, attending to some official looking documentation on a digilog screen. He looked like he was half expecting me and gestured to the chair in front of his desk; I sat down. He turned the digilog device round so that it faced me and handed me a stylus.  
"Sign here" He said gruffly, jabbing at the screen.  
I didn't have the heart to argue and signed.  
"…and here" He said again.  
Well, it's a bit late to not sign now I thought to myself and signed again.  
"Thanks" He said brusquely. He turned the digilog back to face him and after a few clicks sighed and switched the log off.  
"So what are you going to do now?" He asked.  
"I don't know. Look about the ship..my parents….you know I really wanted to…"  
"Ah your parents, they were a handful, especially your father. Not a man to be argued with is he?"  
"Uh" I nearly managed a smile "No, no really, he's a hard man to stop when he gets going."  
"Isn't he just? So you weren't around, he assumed the worst and well what can I say?"  
You don't have to say anything I thought to myself. I was silent for a moment. Mondo gave me a moment to gather my thoughts, then he carried on:  
"He went crazy you know, wanted to impound the ship, lucky it wasn't here."

Lucky it wasn't here.

Well if it wasn't here, where the heck was it?  
"Uhm Mondo? Where was, is, the, you know?"  
"Ah" Said Mondo, pausing for a second "Well you three didn't show up this morning and the ship had gone as well. Then your dear father turns up, goes nuts at me, then goes nuts at the staff and threatens me with the police. I told him what I knew: you'd not shown up and I didn't know where the ship was. Before I knew it he'd jumped to all sorts of crazy conclusions and then your mother, whoooee is she a firework, decided you'd all run off into space."  
Ah that wasn't so good. If my folks thought I'd run off to space they could file a report against me and that would make me a wanted man.  
"Of course your dad insisted that we fill out all the forms and that I sign them as a witness. I don't think I had a choice, given the way things are going."  
He paused as he turned on the digilog, shuffled through a few pages and then hit the print button. I watched a pile of very official looking papers spew out of a printer next to him and flow onto the floor.

"I really must fix that printer" He said, shuffling the papers and putting them back into some semblance of order.  
"Anyway, they got me all turned round with the shouting and cussing and heck, I'll have to tell you sooner or later: they signed the wrong documents".  
By now he'd finished sorting the documents out and passed a neat pile of paperwork over to me.  
"Somehow I printed a release form and they signed it"  
I think my jaw dropped and didn't stop dropping until it hit the floor. I shut my mouth, then stood up and promptly sat down.  
"Mr Mondo, the what and the form?" I said, making no sense at all.  
"Ah the release form, let's just say that it's a piece of paper that means your parents have no control over you anymore and since they have no control, I can issue a temporary pilots licence, here you go". He passed me another official looking document.

I was in a haze having gone from disaster to victory in the space of a few minutes.  
"Mr Mondo, where's my ship?"  
"Big Al made a mistake and towed your ship to the launching pad this morning. The idiot had drunk way too much the night before and entered the wrong details into the station logs. God he's an idiot"  
"So I'm guessing my dad forced a station search and my ship had disappeared then?"  
"Something like that. Look it's best not to go into too many details, it's embarrassing when these things happen. I've got a reputation to protect."  
I thought of a million questions I wanted to ask him but he held up his hands to stop me.  
"Listen kid, the way I see it, luck smiled on you this morning and whilst you were hiding from your folks some angel up there put your ship on the pad and sorted out your paperwork. If I were you I'd round up Kzen and Podie and take that ship of yours for a spin before anyone has second thoughts"

…And that's exactly what we did.


	4. Chapter 4

I'd like to tell you all about a man called Einstein and why geniuses and spaceships don't mix. But before I tell you all about that I should tell you that I'm not going to tell you about my first flight. That's a lot of telling isn't it? So before I find myself abandoned on a desert island lets do Einstein.

There are some people who look like their names, like my mum, but I think you know enough about her for now. Einstein looked the part: bushy hair, beard that could have doubled as a nature reserve and a sense of style straight from the homeless shelter. In short, this man was either an eccentric technician, a mad scientist or genuinely homeless. He could of course have been a combination of all three. So how did Mr Homeless Probably Mad Scientist Einstein happen into our quiet backwater lives? Did I pick up my communicator and dial for a genius? Did the Acme Corp drop him off in a crate? Nah, sorry, wrong, none of the above or you can take me away in chains. Uh… on second thoughts, let's not do chains again. I've got painful memories about that whole episode. So, to cut to the point, Einstein sort of happened to us.

So there we were, maiden flight concluded, basking in the warm afterglow of the engines whilst standing on the boarding deck in the station. We all smirked at each other in a combination of pride and relief that we hadn't messed up and got ourselves killed. I had made a mental note to change out of my brown trousers into something a little more comfortable so we could hit the bar, when Einstein arrived. He looked our ship over, appeared to take some measurements and then, without a word, boarded the ship. This was my ship (okay, our ship if you include Ken and Podia), and no-one just walks onto my ship without permission from the captain…me then. Then I realised something quite important had happened to me. I was a proper captain at last; I'd finally flown my spaceship somewhere. Yeehaaah, the beers are on me. I can't invite all of you round to the party just yet; this space station isn't big enough for that.

But enough frippery. Some random homeless guy (with a beard) had boarded my ship (and he had a beard). Did I say I didn't like guys with beards? I'm even less keen on women with beards but I think that's easier to explain. So I did what any sane ship's captain would do; I picked up a wrench from Kzen's tool kit and headed on board to (politely) ask this guy to leave my ship. When I got on board I realised that it's hard to be polite whilst you're carrying a wrench but I might as well keep it with me just in case. Anyway I found Mr Beard standing on the bridge looking at the controls of my flight deck.  
"Can I help you?" I said, with sufficient overtones of 'And I'm carrying a monkey wrench…' to make myself clear on the matter.  
"Nope, I'm good."  
Damn.  
I wasn't expecting that for an answer. I paused for a beat and then decided to come on a little stronger.  
"No, I don't think you understand me, this is my ship and I'd like you to"  
"S'kay I'm just checking this rig out, come back later if you want", he interrupted. Bearded bastard.  
I clearly hadn't come on stronger at all. I sighed a little internal sigh, straightened myself out and said a lot more firmly:  
"I don't think you get this, bud. This is my ship and you're not meant to be here."  
"Yeah, I get that, but y'ought to know I know a few things, top secret stuff, 'sepecially the mark threes."  
He wasn't going to take no for an answer. Now before anyone reads the last paragraph back to me, just because I didn't say no doesn't mean that I didn't imply NO with a big fluffy capital N, hold the fluffy. So what next? He was busy prodding various inputs on my command console and talking to himself, which was good, since that provided him with sufficient distraction for me to hit him over the head with the monkey wrench. He fell faster than a sack of spanners down a gravity well. Then I came to my senses, or should I say that I was forcibly brought to my senses.  
"Shzpak, Sun, you've killed him," said Kzen.

I'm not sure when Kzen decided to take an interest in my relationships with bearded men, but I really wish he hadn't seen me hit him over the head with the wrench. I didn't feel guilty about hitting him: this was my ship and he appeared to be a fully paid up member of the tinfoil hat brigade (and seeing as he had a beard probably the chief druid of something like that). I just didn't want anyone to witness me clocking this guy from behind, as it wasn't terribly sporting. Don't ask about the sporting bit, it's a Nu-Kunni thing. So there you go; I had my reasons and Kzen had his, which led to the inevitable professional disagreement:  
"Sun, if you've killed him…"  
I interrupted him before he could say any more, "Of course I haven't killed him - he's still breathing." "Sun, I don't think he is breathing…"  
Ah, I thought, game, set and…" Shzpak"?  
For a few appalling seconds we both watched, convinced that Mr Beard had stopped breathing, then he had a coughing fit.  
"Okay genius, how many people who can't breathe have a coughing fit?" I said smugly. (Game, set and Shzpak to me!)  
I don't think Kzen was feeling great about me hitting Mr Beard but he wasn't exactly happy with some random guy boarding the ship either. I could see one feeling collide with the other right in the middle of his face, which led to an odd mixed expression.  
"Next time, perhaps a little less hard huh?" He offered.  
That was a peace offer if I ever saw one, "Okay Kzen, maybe I went in a little too hard. What do you want to do with him?"  
Now, I'll give Kzen this: he's a tough guy in a fight, but he'll never kick a guy when he's down.  
"Frak it" He sighed, "Let's take him back to the pod and we'll make sure he's okay".  
So we three took him back to the pod to see if there was any permanent damage. We broke out the emergency bottle of Spoog's Pod Juice which Podie kept in reserve. Now there are a few things you need to know about Spoog's Pod Juice: you never drink it neat, never let it near naked flames and you never inflict a shot of this stuff on strangers unless you have a signed release form. A few capfuls of the clear liquid wafted under his nose and poured down this throat prompted much coughing, rolling of eyes and the eventual sitting upright on the bed screaming moment. Don't worry it's quite normal for Spoog's pod juice to have that effect on you: that's why it has a skull and cross bones on the label. He made an astonishing trip back to the land of the conscious, albeit with revolving eyeballs. He felt the back of his head and winced when he felt an egg sized lump on the back of his skull.  
"Why do people do that?" He muttered to himself, and then he looked up at us and carried on as if nothing had happened.  
"So you've got yourselves a mark three huh?"  
I looked at Kzen and Podie and they looked back at me. I think we all had a look of "this does not compute" on our faces. Kzen spoke before I did, "Yeah."  
"Cool, the mark three is a great little ship, so many mods you can retrofit, lots of cool tricks. Have you tried any modding yet?" He said.  
I'd like to give you some advice. If a bearded maniac starts talking about modifying your ship, the best thing you can do is to hit him over the head with the biggest blunt object you can find and then RUN LIKE HELL. We made the critical mistake of continuing to talk to him.  
"Mods?" I said incautiously. I should have known that this was the word that our man was looking for. Once I'd said it the floodgates were opened.  
"Oh yeah, let me tell you all about the cool mods you can do."  
Several hours passed. Suffice to say he told us all about the cool and indeed groovy (his words not mine) things that you could do to a mark three ship. Some of them got Kzen, Podie quite excited and their eyes lit up in anticipation of what could be done. One thing led to another and, throwing caution to the winds, we departed to the bar and fed our man (who we nicknamed Einstein) sufficient drink to loosen his tongue some more so that could negotiate a few little things with him.  
By the end of the evening we knew the following: the mark three Impairor was a significant departure for the Amarr Imperial Shipyards. It was the first ship to have dual controls to cater for pod and standard pilots. As such non-pod pilots could fit additional equipment to the pod interface ports which sat dormant under the control deck floor. To access and control the pod interfaces, you had to modify the main flight deck panels, to translate the flow of information and commands between the old flight deck and newer pod pilot's feeds. This cheap way to control this flow was by fitting a heavily modified ballistic collision artifice unit, modified with a control surface adaptor. Say what, I can hear you ask? Okay to give you an idea of how this holds together: the pod pilot's neural interfaces process highly exotic information which a standard instrument rack can't easily digest. To prevent accidental seizure of the controls, because they're overwhelmed with the wrong kind of information, you need something that can sum and filter the flow from pod feed to standard control rack. The cheapest way to do this, according to our Einstein, was to use an adapted ballistic collision artifice unit, which was designed to take insanely complex inputs and spit out very simple answers. To achieve this you had to re-flash the internal processor with a different command set and voila: an instant down state gearing unit, whatever that is. So all this talk of interfacing with a pod pilot's secret mojo kit sounds good, but what could you actually do with it? Ah, welcome to the dark side with a short detour via democracy.

Concord and the local Ni-Kunni border police have their own private, encrypted channels. They use these channels to communicate all sorts of useful information that an average pilot might want to get their grubby paws on. The problem with Concord (and the police) is that they were paranoid about people listening into their chit chat, so they swathed their communications in military grade encryption. Einstein wasn't put off by inconveniences like encryption or legality and he'd cooked up a solution: use the aforementioned ballistic collision artifice unit, a control surface adaptor, synchronise that to two non-euclydian gyrometric crypto spoolers (no I have no idea what they are even now) and a pseudo-random prime boot scrambler (yeah, whatever, it does stuff I'm sure). The combination of these units, the pod interfaces and a random seed key from a Concord interface, was enough apparently to crack the Concord airwaves. Podie and Kzen couldn't get enough of the mumbo jargo (or is that jumbo - I had could feel my brain hurting from all the jargon) that Einstein was spouting. I was more sceptical but unfortunately outvoted by my trusty crew.  
"What could go wrong?" They both insisted looking like puppies at dinner time,  
"The worst that could happen is this thing doesn't work and we don't get to listen to Concord" Said Kzen. "So if it doesn't work we get to rip it out and we're down, what? About a thousand and change? I think it's worth the risk".  
A thousand and change was, admittedly, a small price to pay for a huge leap forward in intelligence gathering potential. I shook hands with Einstein and agreed to start the modifications the next morning.  
So, bright and early Kzen, Podie and I all trooped over to the ship, only to find Einstein had beat us to it. The flight deck was already in pieces and all we could see were his legs, as he bent round underneath the deck flooring to tinker with something. I could hear vague mutterings which must have been him talking to himself. I coughed loudly to make sure that he knew we were there. After about, oh I don't know, five minutes or so, he surfaced with a huge grin on his face and a big bundle of wires and chips in his hand.  
"Look at that, an original R328 combination phase stabiliser. Gods know how it lasted this long!"  
To me it looked like he was holding up a bunch of dirt encrusted wires. Look - I'm the kind of guy that takes out the broken bit, looks up the serial number, orders another bit just like the first bit and puts it all back together. Einstein worked at a different level. I bet he even had pet names for some of his favourite bits of tech. Kzen and Podie were grinning at him: which was a worrying level of encouragement to give a man like Einstein. In the end I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and I left the ship to go run a few errands. I was hoping that Kzen and Podie would eventually get bored of wires and interfaces and decide to come find me. No such luck: they were at it for the entire day and finished late enough in the evening that I'd given up hope and gone to the bar. Einstein would become a problem if he deprived me of bar time with my buddies.  
The next morning both of them were yapping away about their discoveries about the ship, the fun (fun? you call wiring fun?) they'd had reconfiguring the comms system and how much they'd learned from Einstein.  
"Sorry to be in a hurry here guys but were there any problems?"  
"We had a few teething troubles, nothing too big though." Said Podie.  
"What about you Kzen, do you think there's anything to worry about?"  
"Nah, it's going to be fine once we've shaken out a few things here and there."  
Well they both sounded confident and after a light grilling, and a dusting of heavy scepticism from me, they were still confident that everything was going to be just fine. I couldn't see that disagreeing with them was going to get me too far, so I decided to go along with them and see where life took us.  
Life took us all a heck of a lot further than we were expecting it to.


	5. Chapter 5

**Rules:** some you observe and others you break. Some rules are sensible and some are there because the lawyers got involved. There is also a minor but very irritating set of rules which are there just to wreck your day. Our next flight was an object lesson in the application of these rules. Now if you ask me, I think that the gods of the space lanes are a cruel and unusual bunch who, over a period of millennia, made sure that everyone was going to fall foul of these rules one way or another. I bet they sit back in whatever qualifies for their heaven, watching us mortals screw up, whilst recording the best bits to show their friends at the weekend. Am I being bitter? Of course I am.

Those of you who were paying attention know that we'd added some secret sauce to our Mark 3 Imparior and were hoping that this new innovation would allow us to listen in to Concord broadcasts. Of course the only way to test that this mod was going to work, was to undock and take a flight. We were all geared up and ready to go. We decided against taking Einstein with us because he told us he got space sickness and I didn't fancy clearing up my flight deck after him. In hindsight I think he may have had other reasons for not coming with us.

We got a tow to the launching bay and double checked our systems before they were off-lined by the launch control tower. On older stations (like this one) they used a magnetic acceleration rail to ping you out of the station. To ensure that no accidents happened, they took control of your ship during launch. The overall effect of a mag-launch is best described as being pinned to your seat by a three hundred pound gorilla, whilst you're wearing a black out band over your eyes. After the launch there's a desperate scramble to check that everything's back on line and to ensure that the launch tower hadn't shot you towards an inbound ship. We all frantically checked our instruments (all clear), I checked for neighbouring ships (none). We heaved a collective sigh of relief and then before anything got pinged into us, I punched in a course for orbit around one of the nearer planets in our system, so we could test the Concord rig. The Flight plan kicked in and we warp-jumped to a small planet that doubled as an orbital junkyard. Kzen and Podie were itching to get started with the Concord gizmo, and I knew that I couldn't let hold them back much longer, so to give the illusion that I was in charge I gave them the nod. They immediately set to work. Buttons were pressed, switches were flicked, relays were relayed and manuals consulted. Actually none of that happened, this is the twenty something century, so Kzen pushed a virtual button on his control surface and smiled at me. So much for putting on a show I thought. There was a pause, whilst Kzen switched the comms subsystem onto "roaming mode". We caught snatches of conversation on various channels; local is always filled by someone swearing at someone else, travel information is always full of adverts and then suddenly we struck gold.  
"Concord 17 this is control, notify infraction at Avada Stargate, code 6 in progress."  
"Roger control, code 6 in progress, notify infraction."  
"Control, this is Concord 22, reporting backups at Haimeh, suspect interference in Jasson."  
"Roger Concord 22, added to info view."  
Oh yes, we were receiving Concord loud and clear.  
Kzen and Podie gave loud whoops and punched the air. I allowed myself a quiet smile: the guys had done well. This was indeed something that could save our butts if we paid attention.

I could only keep half an ear on Concord transmissions, as the planet we were orbiting had, as I mentioned before, become a junkyard. Even with collision avoidance on, it was a reasonably taxing job to keep the little Imparior clear of the biggest bits of junk. I had to rely on the shields to deflect the smaller stuff.

Things were going quite well. Kzen and Podie started channel hopping, to collect and programme all available Concorde and local police channels, so that we could access them on demand rather than search for them each time we needed to listen in. We noted from time to time the odd burst of prolonged white noise which hit the Concord channels. The bursts were intense and random in duration. The comms panel got upset with one of the bursts and Kzen had to re-start the sub system to free it up.  
"What the frak was that?" Said Kzen.  
Podie and I were non plussed, although Podie volunteered a less than useful idea:  
"You sure you put everything back together right?" He said innocently.  
Now the only way to resolve disputes like this is to refer to the manual. It is at this point I ought to provide you a quote from Sunforge's Space lane Rules (learned from bitter experience).

Rule 1: All manuals are actually written in Jovian then translated on a computer maintained by a drunken chimpanzee.

Kzen and Podie both reached for the big manual at the same time. After a brief struggle and a bit of swearing, from both parties, they got down to the interesting bit; understanding the manual.

In my experience, manuals only serve to confuse those of us devoid of a god-like understanding of modern electronics, so Podie's response was pretty predictable.  
"This looks like it was translated on a computer maintained by a drunken chimpanzee"  
Well Duh, it's a manual, what do you expect? No I didn't say that, I just thought it; I had no intention of making this a three way fight.  
"Podie, you're holding the manual upside down".  
The argument could have run and run but the ship decided to butt in with a few ideas of its own. It all started with a spectacularly long and ear splitting burst of white noise, then all our control surfaces blinked and died.  
"So Kzen, does the manual cover this?" I said sarcastically.  
Kzen had a look of wild panic on this face; I didn't share that look until I stared out of the bridge and realised that a very large pointy piece of debris was coming right at us.  
" Shzpaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!" I said hauling on the controls, then realised that I had to switch to manual over-ride to make them respond. Kzen and Podie joined the chorus a split second later as our shields suddenly made contact with the debris and we rebounded off it like a ping-pong ball. Great, we were now heading sideways at speed. I looked down at my situational controls only to realise that they'd gone out too. There was one small problem with this; there was no side view window, you only got a front view on this little crate. To compensate for that small problem, I jerked the ship round on its bow thrusters and then promptly wished that I hadn't. Smack in front of us was another large pointy piece of junk. Ker-boink, went our ship, Ka-ping went the shields, "Oh Frak", went the crew and off we cannoned, backwards.  
It's times like these that a ship's captain has to give succinct orders, that describe the situation as it stands, that motivates the crew to get things back on track but leaves them room to exercise initiative.  
"Sort this problem the Frak out: I'm not gonna get killed by flying junk".  
I think that summed it up nicely. I gave myself a mental pat on the back and then returned to the frantic business of keeping us alive. Kzen and Podie exercised their initiative by descending into an argument about the manual, whilst disassembling some of the comms controls. It was at this point that Sunforge's Space lane Rules struck again:

Rule 2: Thou shalt not expect two or more technicians to agree. On. Anything. Ever. Especially if it involves a manual translated from the original Jovian.  
Did you see that one coming? Sadly I didn't. Anyway I would have banged their heads together to make them see sense, but that would have meant that no-one was flying the ship, which was a bad idea right now.  
"Sun, can you not bounce us round so much?" Complained Podie.  
"Oh I'd love to do that Podes, but it's this space junk and the fact that my entire frakking PANEL's gone dead"  
"We're frakking workin on', OWWWWW, that right, FRAK THIS, now!" Added Kzen.  
Within the space of a few seconds events had descended into farce. If they weren't arguing with each other about who had done what to which component, they were complaining about my piloting abilities. I discovered that piloting a ship by hand was much harder work than it looked, especially when I realised that some of the space junk was composed of old, decaying ordnance which went BANG when your shields hit it. Fortunately the stuff abandoned out here had decayed enough to be sub-lethal, but the first collision inspired explosion nearly killed us all by heart attack. We must have spent about half an hour cannoning round the junk yard, shouting friendly words of encouragement at each other, often ending with a pleasant "Frak you and your mother" for the sake of emphasis. Eventually I threaded the ship though the worst of the debris to a clear spot and managed to hold us in a quasi geo-stationary orbit, whilst they guys set about jury rigging some controls. This brings me to Sunforge's Space lane Rule number3:

Rule 3: Technicians can eventually fix anything, however thou willest pay a high price for the fix bud and it won't look pretty when they've finished. Okay enough with the thou's already.

So thee and thou have been warned. We sat, or rather orbited in place, whilst Kzen and Podie found their way round the knocked out comms sub system. After a few trials and a lot of errors, we got enough control surfaces back online to attempt a jump back to the station. Now jumps are a matter of careful plotting by the computer, rather than us humans, and you just have to trust that they'll spit you out of the warp tunnel where they say they're going to. Mis-jumps aren't that common but they can happen, especially when Rule 3 is invoked and your gunner has accidentally wired the pseudo-random prime boot scrambler directly to the navigation unit's second input. Now call me old fashioned but feeding random numbers into a nav computer might do something weird to your flight path and verily it did.

We jumped sideways and arrived backwards. In completely the wrong place, with no idea where we were and just in case the ship thought we weren't paying attention, everything went offline again. Nice. I opened my mouth to make my feelings known to Podie and Kzen but they beat me to it, as they fell to arguing with each other about who was the biggest Pod Pucker. I ended up reversing my original aggressive stance and had to play peacemaker, which wasn't something I was expecting; I always thought that the captain was the one to dish out the dirt.  
"Can you two stop yelling at each other? You're both pod pucking idiots and you're both going to get us all killed if you carry on like this."  
That got their attention, now for the tricky bit:  
"Okay how do we get this thing online and back to the station without another jump like that?"  
They thought for a moment and were, I could tell, about to indulge in another spectacular disagreement when I held up my hand to stop them.  
"Guys we're all in this together, it doesn't matter who's wrong and who's right in this; when we get back home you two can argue all you like over a beer"  
My little speech calmed them down a little (not a lot, they still grumbled under their breaths at each other) and we all knuckled down to business. Ah that brings me to Sunforge's final rule of the space lanes.

Rule 4: Go Team.  
Okay I'll admit it; rule four isn't exactly a rule, more a statement of relief. I tore up the manual and we three worked out how to get ourselves back home. So what (you're asking yourself) did we three plot? It was relatively simple really. We'd rip out the stuff that Einstein had put in, put back what he'd ripped out and concentrate on essential systems only, cannibalising parts if we had to. It took us a few hours to get the basic systems back online. A tense half hour followed as we checked and fretted over the next jump. When Kzen and Podie were happy, I pressed the big red button. Okay it's not really a big, red button but you get what I mean.

We jumped. We arrived in the right place. Then we crashed into the station shields, rebounded and landed in a heap a few hundred metres from a freighter, whose captain let us know exactly what he thought of my piloting skills on the local channel. Some you win, some you lose. I settled for getting home and called it a draw. Docking was exciting as our systems were flickering on and off every time someone hit the local comms channel. Mercifully the station tractor beams latched on to us and towed us in after a brief interlude of blind panic on my part. We'd arrived back home, our experiment of listening in to Concord channels an unmitigated disaster. Something told me we'd need to have a little talk with Einstein. I fished my personal communicator out of my pocket and gave him a call. We agreed to meet up on the ship to work out what went wrong and to see if we could put the electronics back together into a meaningful whole. Whilst I was pondering what could be done, my eyes alighted on the manual's title: Impairor Mark 3b. Okay, "3b" I thought to myself, is that different from the original 3 and what about the 3a? How could you tell? When Einstein turned up he had the answer. It was the wrong answer.  
"Oh frongsticks had you told me it was a 3b I'd never have made the mods in the first place" Einstein said when he got on board. "Only a raving idiot makes changes to the 3b".  
Now I don't know how it happened, but for one reason or another, I found that I had a wrench in my hand. Since my hand had nothing better to do and since my brain decided to occupy itself with other things my hand took the initiative and clocked Einstein with the wrench.  
"Nice shot" Said Podie.  
"Hmmm still breathing," Said Kzen  
"Dumpster?" I added.  
We all nodded our agreement and hauled him off to the dumpster so he could sleep it off in peace.

It's a funny thing but taking my frustrations out on Einstein drew us all closer together. Kzen and Podie stopped arguing and before we knew it we'd got most of the systems back online. We did have to go cap in hand to Mondo for some parts, but once we'd told him the story (and he'd stopped laughing) he gave us most of what we wanted for free after reminding us of Mondo's general law:  
**Never trust a genius, especially the last genius that repaired your ship.**

I never did find out what happened to Einstein after our last, brief, conversation but I'm told he skipped the station after failing to pay a few bills. Word soon got out that I'd been the man who'd laid him out with a wrench not once, but twice, and I was quite surprised to realise how much good will that got me round the station. I guess every cloud (and some geniuses) has a silver lining after all.


End file.
